Cigarrettes are tacitly legal litter?

In my continued outrage at the ludicrous belief systems of smokers (who can somehow pretend that smoking isn't killing them and making them ill - and then suing the cigarette companies when it does, reducing their productivity at work, suppressing their libido, and making them generally smell horrible and stain their teeth)...sorry, i went a little off topic...

why is it that smokers think that throwing their cigarette butts, either still burning or not, on the ground, out of their cars, onto the sidewalks...etc...is not litter?

In my hometown of Burlington, Vermont, i was out ranting about the amount of butts littering the ground and one of the workers that spend all day long cleaning up the marketplace, told me that he wouldn't have a job if it weren't for cigarettes. He and his co-workers are absolutely convinced that without the litter from cigs, the 3 person team they have working on the Church Street Marketplace would be reduced to just 1...that is 2 full time jobs that the city of Burlington pays for just so cigarette smokers (who we have already established are deluded pathetic creatures) don't have to dispose of their butts in an appropriate receptacle.

If we actually enforced the $500 littering fine on cigarette smokers that litter, we could pay for our entire education system and then some...in fact we might no longer be last in the country in support our state college system...just a thought...